Clay explains that why companies & individuals fail is that we are predisposed to focus on activities that provide an immediate/tangible evidence of achievement. In this way activities that do not pay off for years or decades in the future are neglected. That is, there is no investment for the long term.
Clay suggests that instead of being measured by an aggregate measure (e.g. big pools of money), at our death, we will be measured on our impact on others. Choosing the right measure is important. Our actions are influenced by the measure we choose.
For a corporation, I interpret this as companies that invest enable sustained, positive long term growth. Their investors and employees experience symptoms of safe & nurturing environments (e.g. dividend growth for their personal financial situation, positive workplace where innovation is rewarded).
This is in contrast to the high pressure cooker “meet today’s targets to bolster today’s stock price” environment. Symptoms of this situation are constant stress and a feeling that you’ve missed an opportunity to contribute meaningfully.
It’s about “us” as in the global “us”. Not Canada. Not the USA. Even the poorest North American is in the top 20%. Being in this category means that magnitude changes are small. We’re on top already after all. How will the rest of the globe being better off make all of us better off? That’s the real story. NPR Planet Money provides a picture of what is happening with global incomes:
Oil & Gas faces cultural difficulties. This article is from a key executive from the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill incident (the Macondo blow-out) in which he explains the problem and offers solution insights. A few key takeaways: 1. Leadership. 2. Tie consequences directly to the decision maker.
For updated Link entitled “6 years from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill: What we’ve learned, and what we shouldn’t misunderstand” click here.
Who knew fuel efficient cars would lead to under maintained roads? This is because taxes are collected on fuel use but we’ve gotten more miles from the same fuel – meaning road wear is double. This doesn’t even consider the fact that the taxes are not indexed to inflation. Either mileage based user fees get collected (charged by the miles you drive, instead of fuel consumed) or we accept that our roads are going to look post-apocalyptic.
We are coming into a unique generation, where problems will now be solved by leadership and governance, not by technology. Why? Most of the technology to do what we want to do now exists. This leaves our leaders in somewhat of a pressure cooker; a great leadership sifting whose beginning may be marked by the Occupy Wall Street Movement. (a completely unorganized and ineffective attempt to re-align corporate directors with shareholder interests – their heart was in the right place)
We humans hate changing which is why we need incentives. That’s what economics is. NPR Planet Money’s “The One-Page Plan To Fix Global Warming” podcast explains in simple terms what a carbon tax would look like; click here.
Taxes, when done right, are economically neutral with some people winning and some people losing but the real power is to shift the economy (collective human behaviour) in the right direction.
Me personally, I agree with the economists. I’m not commenting on the science of global warming. Rather, I think of it as a garbage problem. If you can’t pump the gas into your home, then likely it’s unsafe and we don’t want it. Therefore, it’s garbage. Taxes enable us in making the right decisions about how to handle our garbage. The CFC and trans fat situations proves humanity can do this. The alternative is to have a “tragedy of the commons”.
“The tragedy of the commons is an economic theory of a situation within a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting that resource through their collective action. …. [E]nsuring that the users of [a] resource pay for all of the consequences of its use, can provide an alternate solution between privatization and regulation. ” (wikipedia)
One big benefit often not discussed is that a carbon tax favors local production. That is, items that are produced abroad cost more carbon to transport. This has an “on shoring effect” for jobs.
“…I have come to realize that the massive pollution that has enabled our exponential rise in standards of living is the greatest long-term threat to our economy and progress… not rising debt.
Pollution damages the most fundamental capital resources that all life depends on: water, soil and air.
Yet again, denial is keeping those with the power to do something about the situation blind to the danger. …
The solution is simple: Natural resources shouldn’t be considered free anymore. They shouldn’t be seen as inexhaustible. Instead, they should be seen and valued as the financial asset they are. They should have a price on them, just like financial capital or labor.
A carbon tax is a good place to start. But it mustn’t be arbitrary. It must take into account the pollution and clean-up costs, so allowing consumers and businesses in the free-market system to make better decisions for now and the future. Other taxes could be cut to offset this new tax.
We’ve been over-borrowing since the early 1970s. We’ve been over-polluting since the late 1700s.
Debt is the crisis of this decade.
Pollution is the crisis of this century!
If we don’t deal with pollution and rapidly rising CO2 levels we could literally choke ourselves into extinction.
It’s time our politicians and economists break free of their denial… and start to implement policies that are good for the economy and the planet.”
(26Jan2019 update) Bill Gates summarizes the main contributors to greenhouse gases (hint: not typically what people think of). R&D and incentives are needed to help generate business cases that both reduce emissions and make financial sense. That’s where taxes come in.
Gap Wireless shed further light on cellular service to Oil & Gas at the CommTech West conference. Gap installed the Bow office tower’s Distributed Antenna System (DAS). Had the Bow not had a DAS there would have been poor cell service on the top floors because of “pilot pollution” or too many ideal cell services to choose from. The cell phone gets so confused it doesn’t work even though it shows 4 bars. For the O&G field, cell boosters are a big issue. Every 3dB noise increase, which can be caused by a single booster (there are 10’s of boosters around each cell base station), cuts the incumbent’s cell base station’s capacity considerably. More proof that O&G cellular data service will continue to be a challenge in the field (In addition to large changes in population from O&G development).
Petroleum Development Oman (66%) / Shell (34%) Joint Venture adoption of IHS CERA’s 2003 study’s recommendations for a Smart Oilfieldand a connected field has enabled them to deploy technologies that:
Increased a mature oilfield’s production by 100K barrels/day. At $90/barrel this is $3.2 Billion/year in additional revenue.
Reduced drilling time from 39 to 14 days ($40K/day savings = $1M per drill saved). Saved $5M per-well cost (includes drilling and completions).
The cost of a connected field to one year of savings and revenue increase: less than 1%. Perhaps a smart oilfield is better than simply making educated guesses to increase reservoir pressure via water injection?
Redline’s Connected Field for PDO/Shell Joint Venture – This mature 45,000 sqr km brownfield contains:
I confess, I really like stuff that works. I don’t appreciate bugs and workarounds. Computers and software are particularly bad offenders. That’s why if I can’t control component quality myself (I build my own desktop computers), I’d rather trust vertically integrated products (e.g. Microsoft Surface, Google Nexus, Apple products). Vertical integration in its purest form is where the supply chain of a company is owned by that company. From a consumer perspective that means a greater focus on quality for all components of a service. In the computer world the Open System Interconnection (OSI) model describes all the components required to function optimally for services to work well. My passion for quality also happens to be why I have found my career focus on telecom (layer 1) and telecom engineering (layer 0), especially in a rural environment. If telecom does not work, not much else does.
